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3 - Accommodating the alien in mid-Elizabethan London plays

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 June 2009

Lloyd Edward Kermode
Affiliation:
California State University, Long Beach
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Summary

The previous chapter's closing notion of the push toward real, physical consequences of moral behaviour is what Robert Wilson brings home in The Three Ladies of London, a play he wrote a couple of years before being drafted into the new Queen's Men's company in 1583. The play opens with Lady Love and Lady Conscience lamenting their impoverished state at the hands of the despicable Lady Lucre. Dissimulation, Fraud, Simony, and Usury reveal themselves as villains before trying to gain service with Love and Conscience who reject them. All the while Simplicity is caught within his limited understanding of the world; he recognizes some villainy, but gets into trouble easily. When Lady Lucre enters, these henchmen tell narratives of their history in good vice style. The Italian merchant, Mercadorus, is insinuated into the group and assures Lady Lucre that he will serve her in his capacity as a cheating and commonwealth-ruining trader, exporting good English materials and importing foreign trinkets. Hospitality stands against them all, representing English Christian tradition and stability of the realm, and for his pains he is murdered by Usury. Indeed, in order to survive characters have to be protean and selfish. Thus Peter Pleaseman will be a preacher in whatever denomination is required, Artifex the artificer will use fraud in his craft to compete with the aliens, Creticus the Lawyer will argue any which way Lucre desires for his reward, Sir Nicholas Nemo offers hospitality and promptly disappears, and when Mercadorus refuses to repay his loan to his Turkish Jewish creditor (the honest Gerontus), he threatens to turn Turk to avoid the debt.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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